day-dreaming...
if one million singapore dollar drop from the sky right now for me. guess how i am gonna use it? dammit man... i am gonna use it to buy TWO villas in Shanghai. each of them will be more than 300sq m. seriously... even though china is trying to cool off its property price coz it is super inflated... it doesn't mean that it is not a good idea to invest in real estate there. just that it won't be a good idea to borrow from the banks though.
come on... two top-tier villas that is like at the prime location for 500k Singapore... one 3 room HDB flat in singapore in my area is already like 300K... and if you talk about a private apt unit along orchard, it is gonna cost you more than 1million oledi... so forget abt villas. but in china, you can get that for 500k... how can you ever beat that? you just pay for them in cash, then rent them out. if i remember correctly, last time my friends rented a lousy apt unit in shanghai, it cost them about 800RMB... imagine renting the villas out for 20KRMB to the expats per month... that would be like getting 4% of interest from the bank every month. how shiok can it get??? got market or not you might ask? well... i would think there is, coz it is located just beside two international schools and a stone throw away from one of shanghai's largest shopping area. seriously... i think i would be under-charging. one of my mom's friend rented her private apt that is like quite near to orchard for 5K singapore dollar a month... 5K singapore... that is like 20K RMB... and hers is an apt... and it was snapped up like a week after she posted the ad... so i dun think a rent of 20K is gonna price myself out...
plus, it is not a case of the housing being too expensive for investors. it is essentially that the housing is out of reach for the locals... coz you get assholes like me that earn their money in USD or Singapore dollars... but invest them in chinese properties in RMB... so obviously, for local that are earning 3k RMB a month it is astronomically expensive, but to expats, it is seriously peanuts... hahahahahahaha
and you hold it for 2-3 years and you would have gotten the money back... wat kind of investment nowadays give you that kind of returns? and at the end, you have two freaking villas under your name!!! and oh yeah... i should mention it from the beginning... this villas i am tokking about are developed by singaporean developer... not some shaddy chinese ones that cheat your money by using lousy material for building... we are talking about top notch quality housing at a very very affordable price for foreigners and in the singaporean context.
to tell you the truth, i doubt that the shanghai property price is ever gonna drop... no way... as it grow bigger and develop ahead... it will become just like new york and other big cities... even if there are so much more undeveloped land in the rear of china... property price along the hot spot areas will remain hot and maintain its "cosmopolitan-value".
i pity the local chinese for rich fat assholes like me will always try to earn a quick buck or two at their expense.
posted by David at 10/25/2005 04:53:00 AM
hmmm.... wat a coincidence... something interesting happened today that made me really want to blog abt it... and i saw the remark made by jebai below... interesting...
been busy with the obvious. was able to chat in office coz the company has its own IM system... so given that it has the same interface with MSN, i was able to chat with ppl while working last week... but dun think i will be able to do that any more starting from this coming week...
alot of things happened during work. alot alot of interesting things learned. but contract obligation forbid me to tok abt any of these things... and obviously as we all know... it is always the things tat we are not allowed to say that is often times the most interesting there is to say. MUAHAHAHAHAHA...
well, guess there is this one thing which i could say. When i was in US, i wanted to polish my skill in portfolio management. so i did trading on paper. everyweek, i would identify 5 different companies that i think will be great and monitor their performance for the following week to see if my predictions were correct. did tat for abt a month... was pretty good at it. but there was one company (won't tell you which one though...). i felt that the foundamentals abt that company were excellent. and it is obviously underrated like hell. most traders somehow just ignore the company and there wasn't much trading activities with regards to tat particular stock... so i got interested, and i tried to find out more abt the company. but guess wat, MSN, Yahoo and a couple of other sources i checked with gave me nothing on the company. no current news, i couldn't get any details on wat exactly the company was doing (i tot it is some kind of kodak like company... but it later turn out to be pharmaceutical...) so it was like this phantom stock with very little info on the company...
so basically, while undergoing thru the company's foundation training, i was introduced to our premium financial product and i did a search on tat company... omg... i was greeted with tons of news and infos on that company that i could never imagine. from where the CEO n Board members went to college, their company stats, company info and corporate strategy etc.... it was really really really comprehensive and just blew my mind away....
You can imagine how proud i felt to be in the company at tat point. and coz of this, i feel that we will be able to kick our competitors ass in no time. i was really like "WOW... holy shit..." when my cynical search turn out so much good stuff... and everyone were intimidated by my sudden "outburst"... hahahah
but yeah... the real stuff that i wanted to tok abt...
was waiting for the laundry today afternoon and decided to flip thru the channels... landed on TV2 of malaysia and they have a program tat was on the importance of MICES... basically attracting business tourists... coz of their high spending power n all tat... wat really struck me was the part with the head of tourism for malaysia... he was doing the standard interview which he was suppose to outline what the tourism board is suppose to do to attract these sugar daddys... and guess wat... the dude look like a kid caught without preparing for his hw... he was like "we have erm... erm... 3 broad goals... which are erm.... erm... erm... " and keep looking down on wat is obviously his precious notes....
i mean... he is just being asked what he is suppose to be doing.... it is not as if a high court judge is being asked these questions... or the interview took place very suddenly along the corridor... this just tell me that this guy is a moron that dun even noe his job well... come on lah... this is wat he is paid to do and yet he can't even speak of his job and wat he is suppose to do properly.... that to me, is just pathetic.
and it makes you wonder what this kind of officials are doing in the office? it is not just a situation in the malaysian govt... it is everywhere... you ask a dude a question that is relevant to his job. and yet he can't even tell you properly... doesn't it makes you wonder wat kind of nonsense he has been up to and would ask if he deserve his job? yeah... being seeing alot of such cases around... and the most glaring of such recent example also came from a malaysian girl i had training with. my trainer ask her, "after 3 mths at your job, could you share with us wat you do? and define for us this technical term which you are working on" and tat girl's reply was "oh i dunnoe... i just do wateva my boss give me to do..." and she said it as if there is nothing wrong with it and tat my trainer is being a moron.... omg... it is like asking an engineer working on RFID wat it means and he tell you he dunnoe.... or asking a chemist wat CO2 is and he dunnoe.... wtf... you have this kind of ppl sitting in positions doing nothing... and at the same time, so many ppl tat is having such a hard time looking for a job.... just think it is so unfair... but of course... sometimes, a person may be without a job simply coz he is lazy (or perhaps even a silly ajax/arsenal/anti man u fan...)... hmm... just so happened that i know one such person that lives in KL... MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
posted by David at 10/22/2005 10:35:00 AM